<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Patchwork Man by Koruga</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352388">Patchwork Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koruga/pseuds/Koruga'>Koruga</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bodyhopping, Character Study, Drug Use, Gen, Introspection, Trans Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:07:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,384</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352388</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koruga/pseuds/Koruga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonah Magnus contemplates his being with smoke and mirrors.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Associated Articles Regarding One Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Patchwork Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A Secret Santa gift for my dear Funk on Discord, posted to Ao3 by request. I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Elias was a strange sort of fragile, sometimes. The no-nonsense head of the Magnus Institute, alone at the top of his ivory tower, he should be untouchable. He was meant to be untouchable. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But, as always seemed to be the case, the body fell back on old habits despite the best efforts of the mind inside of it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias let out a deep breath, watching the reflection of the smoke he exhaled curl across the air in the mirror. He'd smoked before, of course -- Jonah Magnus spent his share of time in opium dens, Damian Wakely had adored his cigars, and Richard Mendelsohn alternated between chewing tobacco and smoking it outright. But marijuana -- that was a new one for him, a vice he'd not experienced before Elias Bouchard came along.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It's not like he didn't try to curb those desires. Jonah stamped down as much of the original mind as he could, leaving his hosts nothing but observers in their own bodies. But the fact of the matter was, no matter what he did to force his being into another body, traces always remained. Underlying conditions, nervous tics, addictions.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias here had a habit of chewing the inside of his mouth and popping his ears. Jonah brought a hand to his mouth, tugging on his lip to look at the white scab inside. "I really need to put a stop to that," he muttered to nobody in particular. "It's rather painful."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Painful, yes, but it helped him focus. This body was so easy to distract, so difficult to tie down into one task. Coming from the dull, uniform focus of James Wright, it was a shock to Jonah's system to remember that not everybody was able to sit down at a desk and budget the entire day long. Over a decade now, going on two, since he had settled into Elias, and he still had to take walks, breaks, anything to make the monotony of his day less unbearable.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Had he been like this as Jonah? Surely not. Jonah had thrown himself into every task with the fervour of a man about to die from thirst. Jonah had no mind for budgeting, he spent money like it was water, confident he could charm more coins from his dear friends to fund his lifestyle. The budgeting mindset had come from...Ellis Charles, his third body, the one he'd inhabited in 1899.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ellis had been a rush job, in all honesty. Damian had gotten himself shot after an altercation with a Man of War, and Ellis was the closest person he could turn to, he could turn into, on such short notice. He didn't go by Ellis back then, still so worried as to what would happen if he lived as his true self. Damian had had some reservations about transferring into someone displaying himself as a lady, but it had been almost trivial to erase the existence of the woman Ellis used to be, and give him the life he'd always wanted, deep down, too afraid to say anything about it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe he was a saviour like that, Elias thought lazily, giving a loud yawn as he unbuttoned his starched shirt. He gave his bodies lives they never could have dreamed of beforehand. Damian was lifted from academic ridicule, Ellis from a cage of his own expectations. James had been trapped in a loveless marriage before Jonah came along, and Elias --</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well. He ran a hand across his chest, the faded scars sewn up against his smooth skin. Elias never would have been able to budget for such a transition before this. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias blew out harshly, watching the smoke around him move in patterns only he could see. "All of this...it's so transitory, don't you think?" he asked nobody in particular. It was around these times, when he was alone, high, tired from work, when he felt the most Seen. Of course Elias had never suffered from paranoia when he smoked, not before and not after, but his mind was so much clearer like this. It was harder to Watch effectively when his mind was clouded, and when he wasn't Watching, he was always being Watched.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>What was there to see, anyway? A puzzle of a man, leaning on one side to watch himself strip down in a mirror. Stolen bits of mind, from one man and another, sewn together haphazardly throughout the years like a patchwork quilt. Unoriginal, uncreative, uninspired. Richard Mendelsohn's mother had always scolded him that he never did anything himself. He only ever imitated men he saw, in movies, in plays, at home. He would never get anywhere like that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She was right, of course, but the words stuck with Richard, and they stuck with Jonah. He hadn't made much, in the end; he collected pieces rather than causing his own specific fear. He attached himself, rather than creating. It was all rather pathetic in the end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Elias frowned at his form in the mirror. He'd never had dips like this with plain nicotine or alcohol -- he'd never had dips like this with weed either, not until he was added to the patchwork of identity. Who was anyone else to say he didn't make things? What sort of question was that, when he'd made himself again, and again, and again? An unoriginal man wouldn't be so fierce to Become, would he? An uninspired man wouldn't have set up the dominoes to rule the world. An uncreative soul would have given up trying to be perceived, again and again, as the prim, intellectual man none of his bodies had ever truly been meant to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turned away and took another drag, feeling his lungs fill with smoke. It had been an accident, the first time he'd taken a body. Damian had simply been the most convenient option for him, the most accessible man he could find. He hadn't thought to look too far into it -- discovering when he had finally made himself comfortable that Mr. Wakely, as well, held a secret within his body, had been a surprise he could not surely call unhappy.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Men like him were unique. Men like him hadn't had a name to call themselves, when he had begun. He'd gone through identities, trying to find something that fit, until the world came around to him, and began to understand the words invisible for so long.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How far they'd come. Elias's hand wandered down to his groin, pressing against the folds gently. Ellis had wanted nothing more than to reconstruct his entire body from the bottom up, to plaster a penis onto himself, no matter how unrealistic. Richard had shared the sentiment, but Elias had a view more similar to that of Jonah Magnus. What mattered most was how he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>perceived,</span>
  </em>
  <span> the presentation of manhood more than the nuts and bolts of such a thing. He didn't mind the plumbing nearly so much as James had -- it worked for him, to a certain extent. Even though he could easily afford such a replacement, as he had when Richard had gone in for such a surgery, he didn't need it so much. He'd sculpted this body with hormones and training, given it shape and purpose. Elias, after all, was going to be the body he saw to the end of the world with, he was certain of that now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Oh, it was so close. Elias turned back to the mirror, lazily feeling his body as he opened a few of his Eyes. Even in the haze of drugs, he could Watch his Archivist stumbling across London for answers. Staring into Tim Stoker's window, his paranoia growing by the minute.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jon was as fragile in creation as Elias had been, so many years ago. He was a work in progress, desperately trying to fill every piece of himself so he could be whole.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was the difference between the two of them, then -- Jon would someday be finished and perfect. He was a work of spun glass, with a picture in mind already of what he would become.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Jonah was an endless quilt of fine silk, every piece another story. He would never be finished, not really, not until he won or died. He was an experience, a feeling. Incomplete, and all the more beautiful for it.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>